IRVINE : Residents Applaud Senior Center Plan

Gray-haired residents filling six rows of the City Council chamber burst into applause after the council approved a new, $7.2-million senior center.

“This is going to make a tremendous difference in the lives of our senior citizens,” said Bud M. Harvey, president of the Irvine Senior Foundation, on Tuesday night.

The city’s existing senior center has been at capacity since 1987.

The new senior center will include an adult day-care program that will offer services for up to 50 residents needing medical care but who are still able to live at home under the care of someone else. The adult day-care service is reason enough to build the senior center, Harvey said.

“If there is any fear that a senior citizen (with failing health) has, it is to be put in a convalescence home,” he said. “That’s a mortal fear.”

The program will allow a spouse or child caring for an older person to be able to work, shop or just spend time for themselves while their loved one is at the day-care center, Harvey said.

The senior center and day-care service will be in separate wings of the building, to be built at the northeast corner of Alton Parkway and Lake Road. The center is the first phase of a future 22-acre Woodbridge Community Park.

The council’s unanimous vote was preceded by announcements from the Irvine Co. that it will give $1 million toward the center’s construction and from Irvine Medical Center that it will donate at least $100,000. With the private donations, the city will probably have to borrow less than $2 million to build the center, said George Searcy, a Community Services Department superintendent in charge of services for seniors.

The lack of money to build the city’s second senior-citizens center prompted residents to form the Irvine Senior Foundation. The foundation has been raising money from local businesses and private donors to have the senior center built faster than if the city waited to set aside the money to build it, Harvey said.

The Irvine Evergreen Chinese Senior Assn. also is expected to raise at least $100,000 toward the building.

As part of its Tuesday approval for the new senior center, the council gave J.R. Roberts Corp. the contract to build the center for $5,024,000. The company was the lowest of nine bidders and offered to build the center for $600,000 less than the city estimated.